The massive seed round was led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Sarah Guo’s Conviction Partners.
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Generative Bionics’ smart robot skin prevents collisions
Humanoids and humans are increasingly sharing factory floors, but one is made of metal and the other of flesh and bones, a mismatch that rarely ends well for us in a collision. Italian startup Generative Bionics thinks it has a fix: a humanoid robot covered in sensing skin that feels people approaching and adjusts its movements before any contact occurs.
The robot, called Gene.01, is wrapped in a network of sensors running from its torso to its limbs. This smart skin tracks touch, temperature, proximity, and force simultaneously, letting the robot anticipate a person’s presence and react before and during contact. It’s a bit like pulling your hand away from a hot stove before you actually touch it. The heat you feel from a distance is enough to make you stop.
The same sensors let humans physically teach the robot new tasks. Rather than only showing Gene.01 a movement on video, a person can guide its arm directly, helping it learn exactly how much force to apply. Generative Bionics says this solves one of humanoid robotics’ persistent headaches: teaching a machine to grip an object firmly enough that it doesn’t drop it but gently enough that it doesn’t crush it – a skill that’s hard to learn from video alone.
Structure and evolutionguided design of minimal RNAguided nucleases
The design of RNA-guided nucleases with properties not limited by evolution can expand programmable genome-editing capabilities. However, generating diverse multidomain proteins with robust enzymatic properties remains challenging. Here, we use a protein design strategy that couples a structure-guided inverse-folding model with evolution-informed residue constraints to generate active, divergent variants of TnpB, a minimal CRISPR-Cas12–like nuclease, termed SynTnpBs. High-throughput screening of artificial intelligence–generated variants yielded editors that retained or exceeded wild-type activity in bacterial, plant, and human cells. Cryo–electron microscopy–based structure determination of the most divergent variant revealed stabilizing contacts in the RNA–DNA interfaces across conformations, demonstrating the design potential of this approach.
Insect-inspired electronic nose: Turning semiconductor chips into olfactory sensors
Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego integrated the olfactory receptor of an insect called a jumping bristletail into semiconductor chips made of graphene, creating an electronic nose capable of sniffing out a wide variety of small organic compounds. This biomimetic bioelectronic sensor can detect and distinguish between molecules that are difficult for conventional electronic sensors to differentiate. This work opens the door to building semiconductor-based chemical sensing systems inspired by nature for applications in health care, environmental monitoring, food quality, agriculture and biodefense.
In a paper published in Advanced Materials, researchers led by bioengineers at UC San Diego describe a method for manufacturing the MhOR5 odorant receptor from the insect Machilis hrabei at scale and chemically attaching the purified MhOR5 protein to high-performance graphene field effect transistors (gFETs). gFETs are semiconductor devices that rely on graphene instead of silicon as the conductive material, resulting in exceptional sensitivity to molecular changes.
The researchers tested their MhOR5-functionalized gFETs against 16 chemically diverse compounds, including DEET, hexanol and eugenol, at different concentrations. The sensor produced a concentration-dependent electrical response for each of the 16 compounds.
Can ctDNA Predict Both Benefit and Toxicity From Immunotherapy?
The investigators asked whether ctDNA status could simultaneously identify patients with a lower probability of therapeutic benefit and a higher likelihood of developing immune-related toxicity. If confirmed, ctDNA could become an important tool not only for predicting efficacy but also for improving treatment selection and avoiding unnecessary exposure to checkpoint inhibitors.
Study Design
The investigators performed a post hoc biomarker analysis of the randomized phase III IMvigor010 trial.
Let’s talk about my clone…
He makes sure to tell people he did not make embryos.
Friends, I did NOT create a human clone. What I did create are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) — cells that can potentially become many different cell types and may one day help repair the body.
It’s one of the most promising technologies in regenerative medicine, and is already being explored in clinical research.
The science is fascinating, the ethical questions are important, and both deserve thoughtful discussion.